Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Alendronate can help prevent bone fractures in many postmenopausal women

23.01.2008

Giving 10mg per day of the bisphosphate drug alendronate to women after their menopause can help prevent loss of bone mass, reducing their risk of fractures, a Cochrane Review has found.

This finding applies to women who have started to lose their bone mass but have no fractures (primary prevention), as well as those who have lost significant bone mass and/or have had fractures (secondary prevention).

Healthy bones constantly break down and rebuild their structure. The process is sensitive to hormones and once women have passed through the menopause the balance is disturbed; their bones tend to break down slightly more than they build. Over time this leads to a noticeable loss of bone mass, and weakening of the bones. Once the bones become too weak they are prone to fracture.

A team of Cochrane Researchers set out to evaluate the evidence behind the use of alendronate for primary and secondary prevention of bone fractures in these women. Alendronate works by inhibiting the bone break down process.

By studying the outcomes of eleven trials that involved a total of 12,068 women the researchers found significant evidence of both primary and secondary prevention against breaking bones in the back (vertebrae). In secondary prevention, there was also a statistically significant protection against fractures of other bones including those in the hip and wrist.

“This work revealed no increase in side effects in the women who were using the drugs, despite the fact that some studies outside clinical trials raise the possibility of stomach and jaw complaints,” says lead author Dr George Wells, who works in the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa.

“As a woman gets older, her risk of having on-going health problems or dying is significantly greater if she has reduced bone density and then breaks a bone such as a hip, so it is important to find effective preventative therapies with low or no side-effects,” says Wells.

Die letzten 5 Focus-News des innovations-reports im Überblick:

Whether you call it effervescent, fizzy, or sparkling, carbonated water is making a comeback as a beverage. Aside from quenching thirst, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have discovered a new use for these "bubbly" concoctions that will have major impact on the manufacturer of the world's thinnest, flattest, and one most useful materials -- graphene.

As graphene's popularity grows as an advanced "wonder" material, the speed and quality at which it can be manufactured will be paramount. With that in mind,...

Physicists at the University of Bonn have managed to create optical hollows and more complex patterns into which the light of a Bose-Einstein condensate flows. The creation of such highly low-loss structures for light is a prerequisite for complex light circuits, such as for quantum information processing for a new generation of computers. The researchers are now presenting their results in the journal Nature Photonics.

Light particles (photons) occur as tiny, indivisible portions. Many thousands of these light portions can be merged to form a single super-photon if they are...

For the first time, scientists have shown that circular RNA is linked to brain function. When a RNA molecule called Cdr1as was deleted from the genome of mice, the animals had problems filtering out unnecessary information – like patients suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders.

While hundreds of circular RNAs (circRNAs) are abundant in mammalian brains, one big question has remained unanswered: What are they actually good for? In the...

A study led by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Hamburg presents evidence of the coexistence of superconductivity and “charge-density-waves” in compounds of the poorly-studied family of bismuthates. This observation opens up new perspectives for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of high-temperature superconductivity, a topic which is at the core of condensed matter research since more than 30 years. The paper by Nicoletti et al has been published in the PNAS.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, superconductivity had been observed in some metals at temperatures only a few degrees above the absolute zero (minus...